D&AD New Blood Graphite Pencil

Engaging the next generation of newsreaders to create a stronger, more active community

News platforms have the responsibility to effectively inform and actively engage their readers. However, sponsored material, ambiguous content and click-bait articles make it difficult to get a coherent set of accurate, unbiased information.

Invicta aims to overcome those issues by having a clear, interconnected database of relevant statistics and data, created 'by the people, for the people', to become a digital news system that encourages a more informed, politically and socially engaged society, working together as a contributing community, with the power to bring about personal improvement as well as making a global impact.

By the people, for the people

The primary aim of the Invicta news service focuses on encouraging its users to become actively involved with news stories and events that are occuring around them. Members of the Invicta community are a fundamental part of making sure the news system maintains a growing library of news content and material from around the world.

Innovation & improvement

Invicta’s Change section brings together content that allows for convenient access to services and events that users can participate in personally, locally or on a global scale, and opens eyes to successful third party products, systems or innvoations that users can look into further, adopt and share with a wider, always-improving community.

Pushing our values through the interface

The visual language used within Invicta focuses on clarity and efficiency throughout to convey appropriate information in an aesthetic, uncluttered space. Invicta’s focus lies in accessibility of information and a sense of context in its content in order to develop awareness within its users. Activism and change play a major role in the news system, in which Invicta celebrates and encourages reader involvement by providing a platform where news stories and means of directly involving users are brought together.

Reinventing an informative and honest visual language

Taking advantage of the vertical scroll most digital platforms use, the Y-Axis works as a chronological timeline, providing users with a live feed of the most recent stories happening around the world. The X-Axis gives news stories depending on their connection and relationship to the selected story to let users explore related news stories without having to manually search and establish the connection with the story of interest.

Semantically informative design

The Invicta news system aims to emphasise the effect a news story has on the readers themselves. Stories highlighted in red signify a death or threat, e.g. a terrorist attacks or weather warnings. News stories relating to finance and capital are highlighted in green, and any general informative news titles appear in yellow. The aim is to give as much information at a glance as possible, so just the titles alone give an indication of time and date, type of news through colour coordind and icoography, as well as the location.

Talking about what truly matters

Invicta focuses on news categories that are meaningful and informative to the user, and therefore avoids trivia and gossip. The Change & Activism section focuses on everyday public action, and is often used in conjunction with the news topics in order to highlight and through this encourage user interaction and active participation in positive change to the world we live in, on a personal as well as global scale.

Politics &Economics

WorldOrder

Health &Medicine

Science &Technology

Change &Activism

Universality in the Sign Map

Invicta’s extensive picture-sign library allows for a visual overview of news categories in order to establish an immediate understanding of story subjects. The icon family is an ever-growing feature within the news system. Through community contribution, the service aims to build up a collection of signs that help communicate information to the user. The picture-signs are used in conjunction with other elements of the news system, providing readers with a visual signifier that is often anchored by supporting text.

Countries play an important part in categorising news stories within the Invicta visual language system. They allows for users to further personalise and refine the news stories they are interested in whilst also working as a simple visual reference in regards to the location a news story is linked to. When customising or searching for countries within the Invicta system, users can refer to the world map in order to select any of the 196 countries across the globe.

We got a little carried away

The Invicta project also includes a 60 page book with in-depth explations of the branding, the icons from the sign map, detailed designs of the web interface and its features.